So you can stream music from an iOS device to an Apple TV via AirPlay, but …

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As some of you who follow my coverage may know, I like using my Apple TV. More specifically, I'm a fan of using AirPlay to stream media to my Apple TV. For those unfamiliar, AirPlay allows iOS and iTunes users to stream media like music, video, and photos to an AirPlay-enabled device—in my case, an Apple TV is the only one of those devices I own, but Apple also allows third-party speaker manufacturers to license AirPlay so that they can receive streamed audio. And of course, you can still stream audio to an AirPort Express, which itself can be hooked up to any manner of speakers you like.

My primary uses for AirPlay usually involve streaming Pandora from my iPhone to my TV (the main speakers for my living room), and passing around an iPad when friends are over so we can easily browse and watch funny YouTube videos on the big screen. (The Apple TV has its own built-in YouTube app, but trust me: when friends are over, it's easier and more fun to use the iPad as a YouTube video selection device.) On occasion, I also stream my iPad's screen to the Apple TV in order to show off an app or a game I'm playing.

But, as with many things made by Apple, AirPlay's capabilities can be somewhat limited—especially when it comes to streaming from a computer. Sure, you can stream music from within iTunes on both a Mac and PC, but when it comes to anything outside of the iTunes universe, users are out of luck. And as I have discovered recently, there are potentially many non-iTunes apps that you may want to stream media from. For example, you might be listening to a great playlist on Spotify on your Mac and don't want to switch over to an iOS device in order to stream it (as I am right now, in fact, as I write this). Perhaps you're listening to a speech in Safari that you'd like to stream to your TV. Or maybe you're just watching a movie on your computer but want to stream the audio to your higher-quality AirPlay speakers.

That's where Rogue Amoeba's Airfoil comes in. Airfoil is not a brand new app—Rogue Amoeba has sold it for years as a way for computers to stream media to each other, which Airfoil can still do—but the software has renewed appeal to AirPlay device owners looking for more flexibility. And since Airfoil is often lauded by Mac users as one of the best applications out there for this purpose, we decided to finally (finally!) check it out.

First things first: Airfoil is available for both Mac and Windows, but we tested out the Mac version. Each license costs $25, though you can purchase a Mac + PC bundle for $40 (there is also a free trial available for both platforms). Rogue Amoeba just released Airfoil 4.5 for Mac in October of 2011, and the version we used for this piece was 4.6.2.

Streaming: it works (most of the time)

The base features of Airfoil include the ability to stream audio from any app on your machine and the ability to send audio to more than one receiving device at the same time. If that's all you want to do, then that's perfectly fine—the controls are simple and straightforward enough that you can perform the simplest of functions without mucking with other settings. The main drop-down at the top of the window allows you to select your source app, while the devices listed underneath the drop-down are ones that can receive your AirPlay stream. Click the button with the music note in order to stream to the device in question.

Airfoil lets you choose from a variety of sources to stream.

Airfoil lets you stream to multiple places at once. In this case, I'm playing audio to my laptop as well as my iMac.

When we used Airfoil to stream audio from Safari, and later from Spotify, to the Apple TV, it worked well. There were some points in which the AirPlay streamed seemed to hiccup and interrupt our audio, but it was unclear whose fault it was—the hiccups sometimes happen when we're just using Apple's own technology to stream from iOS, so we suspect they're related to Apple's implementation of AirPlay, and not Airfoil. When you stream music to the Apple TV via Airfoil, it passes along any metadata it can find too, so you're never left wondering what you're listening to or where it's coming from when you look up at the TV.

As part of the Airfoil 4 release, Rogue Amoeba added the ability to play Web video, though the description can be somewhat misleading at first. What you want to believe is that Airfoil can stream vide from the Web—namely from Netflix, YouTube, or *gasp* Hulu—to an AirPlay device like the Apple TV. That, unfortunately, is not true. What it can do is stream the audio from those sources while the video continues to play on your machine. This was disappointing when we first discovered it, but the limitations make sense (not that we're thrilled about them)—Apple doesn't currently make it possible for third parties to stream video, so they are currently limited to audio only. So, we don't blame Rogue Amoeba here, except to say that the description of this feature is confusing upon first blush.

Any changes you make to the effects will be reflected in your streamed audio.

One thing that audio nerds might get into is the ability to adjust the effects of your audio that is being streamed. Those who aren't interested don't have to mess around with them at all—the defaults work perfectly fine—but if you choose to hop around on different Equalizer presets (or even set some of your own), the results will stream through to your receiving device. This is a nice touch for those who don't otherwise have that level of control over each song, like when you're listening to Pandora stream instead of an iTunes song.

Another nice touch is the ability to link Airfoil to your computer's own audio system. When you do this and then hit your Mac's volume buttons up or down, the streamed audio's volume will go up or down with it. We liked this particularly while we were listening and working—the ability to quickly turn down the volume of my Apple TV's audio from my own keyboard is certainly helpful when phone calls come in.

Airfoil Speakers

Airfoil Speakers allows you to see which computers are streaming what, and then choose which one you want to listen to

In addition to Airfoil, the download also comes with a copy of Airfoil Speakers, an app that allows you to turn your own machine into a device that can be streamed to from Airfoil on another computer. We tested Airfoil Speakers a bit by streaming music from an iOS device to an iMac, and from Mac to Mac—it performed exactly as expected. What is nice, however, is that Airfoil Speakers allows you to control "select" audio sources that are being streamed to your computer. When we tested it with Spotify, we were able to pause and skip forward or back on the received stream, which is good enough for us. You can even stop the stream if you don't want to hear it anymore, and if there are multiple computers on your network that are offering up a stream, you can choose which ones you want to listen to.

When you are receiving a stream via Airfoil Speakers, you even have a small level of control over the audio.

Getting the job done

Is Airfoil worth the $25? To us, it most definitely is—not so much because we have to have our Mac's audio playable on an Apple TV, but because $25 is quite an affordable price for such a luxury. If I'm already on my Mac (or Windows machine, as the case may be) and I want to listen to some music from my main TV or living room speakers, I no longer have to dig out my iPhone and find a way to stream it from there to the Apple TV—I can do it straight from my computer. The benefits that come with Airfoil Speakers, if you want to stream from device to device, are certainly nice too, and add an extra layer of frosting on the already affordable price tag.

Do you have any other suggestions for us to check out when it comes to AirPlay? Let us know in the comments.

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Jacqui Cheng
Jacqui is an Editor at Large at Ars Technica, where she has spent the last eight years writing about Apple culture, gadgets, social networking, privacy, and more. Emailjacqui@arstechnica.com//Twitter@eJacqui

—You have your Mac connected to a home theater projector, so the video is fed to the projector, and the audio is fed to your AirPlay speakers or Apple TV (which, in turn, routes audio to your normal home theater speakers).

Many of those who claim that Ars wears Apple-tinted glasses will skip right over this article and miss something that flies in the face of their pre-conceptions: "But, as with many things made by Apple, AirPlay's capabilities can be somewhat limited".

For a moment I got really excited that you could stream video, but that would probably be a much more controversial move on the developers part (and harder). I would love to be able to stream European Football games that I can currently watch on espn (legitimately I should mention). Unfortunately espn's app doesn't work with dish so I can't use it there (and they would probably lamely disable airplay anyway).

I had various family over at the house for the holidays, and several times I found myself wishing that I could stream over Airplay to my Apple TV from my Mac. I wanted full video too though, just like the little widget in iOS YouTube. It's just so convenient to pull up something you wanted to show people on your main computer, but it's so much easier to show everyone in the next room on the 50" screen with a couch in front of it.

I have to believe that this is going to end up baked into OS X at some point, it seems obvious.

In the meantime I pulled the same solution as Jacqui and just used my iPad as the central device. Which is no big deal, and I've been part of the groups at her house doing so as mentioned in the story, works fine, but it's not the same thing.

I find Airfoil to work BETTER than AirPlay. I don't know why it does, but AirPlay frequently drops, which is annoying. Airfoil, for the most part works like a charm with very infrequent drops. Apple needs to also provide some form of QoS with AirPlay (i.e. steaming media gets priority over any other data traffic) to help alleviate drops. Something as simple as going to CNN.com often causes AirPlay to drop. So for now, Airfoil is my choice app to stream to my 4 Apple Airports

It drives me crazy that the second-gen AppleTV (unlike the first gen) can't play streamed audio unless the TV is turned on, even via the optical audio-in port. I eventually hooked up an ancient Mac Mini to the living room speakers and started using Airfoil Speakers as my primary Airplay target. It's been quite reliable, and the TV can stay off. I almost never opt to stream to the AppleTV itself anymore.

It's worth noting the existence of Airfoil Speakers Touch, a free iOS companion that creates an Airplay endpoint. Handy when I want to redirect audio from a computer to a set of headphones I'm wearing around the house, or continue listening to a podcast while occasionally walking outside, via the tiny speaker in my pocket.

I had various family over at the house for the holidays, and several times I found myself wishing that I could stream over Airplay to my Apple TV from my Mac. I wanted full video too though, just like the little widget in iOS YouTube. It's just so convenient to pull up something you wanted to show people on your main computer, but it's so much easier to show everyone in the next room on the 50" screen with a couch in front of it.

I have to believe that this is going to end up baked into OS X at some point, it seems obvious.

In the meantime I pulled the same solution as Jacqui and just used my iPad as the central device. Which is no big deal, and I've been part of the groups at her house doing so as mentioned in the story, works fine, but it's not the same thing.

This seems to be primarily a means of working around the limitations of the AppleTV itself. Either it's interface is bad or it's unable to stream/share/play something. You should be able to easily stream whatever you want from your Mac or PC to the ATV and not be stuck using iTunes to do it.

Taking over the screen on the ATV is an interesting idea but it mostly seems like an overkill approach to avoid being able to move data freely from one device to another.

I use it to show my local movies, or internet movies (as URLs) on my big screen.WIth the help of YouTube5 Safari extension, I copy the URLs of internet videos and get them on my big TV.

This also works with other AppleTV compatible videos, such as trailers on apple.com (right click on the 720p link you wnat to watch and paste it to AirFlick).

I would love it it could work in less clicks (anyone able to make a nice service / contextual menus to send an URL or a file to Airflick?) but it seems that Erica has moved on to other projects and stopped developing Airflick :-(

I have a previous version of Airfoil but never used it.SInce I have a Mac Mini with a modified, very special audio output, I do not really want to use my Apple TV for serious listening :-))

Dang, I too was temporarily excited to think that I might be able to stream video. The wife has Amazon Prime, so we were hoping to stream a movie from her computer to the TV via the AppleTV. No go. You also can't view movies from Amazon on your iPad, so there went that option too. We ended up renting the movie via iTunes, which I'm sure Apple was pleased with.

In my experience, on a very typical home network, is that Airfoil works about 40% of the time. Several email to and from Rogue Ameoba (very slow response time, despite claims of 24-hour turnaround) resulted in some ridiculous suggestions for improving my network performance, like moving the speakers close together (in which case I wouldn't need the app) or further away (my house dimensions are finite) or eliminating network interference from neighbors.(I suppose I could ask them to move away, but....)

In the end, overpriced at $25 for something that only works part time. And no offer of a refund from Rogue Ameoba, who asserted that I had a full ten minutes' trial period (that was masked with noise). Be warned, ten minutes is not enough to get a clear picture of whether Airfoil will work on a typical home network.

The thing that I'm waiting for is the ability to stream the separate channels of a 5.1 surround output to different airplay devices. I would love to send the rear channels of the surround sound to my rear speakers without using wires. I think I'm not alone in that either. The first company to do that will make bank for sure...

AirPlay does indeed skip, particularly on heavy usage households with lots of devices and many airplay endpoints. Airfoil suffers from the same problem.

I find the best solution is to give Airport expresses and Apple tvs their own separate wi-fi network (5 ghz) for receiving media, while broadcasting devices are connected to a 2nd network for sending media and day to day surfing,. This allows the gateway to handle the big loads in the hardware and keeps the Airplay wi-fi pipes clear of heavy day to day traffic.

I have not encountered any skipping with this setup and have tested it with many customers. In the end, Airfoil is worth the price just for the ability to turn the Macs into AirPlay endpoints.

I use an app on my iPhone/iPad call "Air Video" that plays videos in a variety of formats (via ffmpeg) to your AppleTV, even in HD. You just have to have the free server that you download from their website running on your back and then set up folders which it will stream from. The server will run on either Mac or Windows too. It doesn't skip if you don't give it outrageous kbit/s. I keep it at 2560 kbit/s and it works fine and the quality is fine.

My Mac is upstairs, but I just sit in front of my 50" with the AppleTV and iPhone and can watch whatever video I want...on my Mac. This doesn't help on Web videos or whatever. As far as music is concerned, AppleTV is set up with iTunes Match, so all my music is there.

I originally bought Airfoil in order to take advantage of a promotion which gave me a free copy of Pulsar. It works well streaming to my Android via AirBubble, but for some reason doesn't work so well streaming to my Windows PC running Airfoil Speakers.

It'd be nice having an old Android with wifi hooked up to speakers running AirBubble, no need to buy new speakers.

"Apple doesn't currently make it possible for third parties to stream video,"

As Goofball_Jones indicates, Air Video overcomes this for weird video files already downloaded. And it's odd that the former Ars staffer's AirFlick wasn't mentioned here, especially since it's been separately covered.

"Apple also allows third-party speaker manufacturers"

You mean self-powered, or amplified speakers, since regular speakers are passive and could never do this. Sorry if anyone thinks that's just semantics, but I don't agree it's implicit. The other omission is that AirPlay has also been licensed to (and appears on) a few surround sound receivers from Denon and Marantz, at least.

BTW, the reason this feature of streamed Web video/audio is a big deal is because AirPlay works on a 2-second buffer. Airfoil does the work of syncing up the video and audio, so video is actually watchable.

intlorange wrote:

You should clarify *why* you might want to stream the audio from a Web video, which does sound confusing:

—You have your Mac connected to a home theater projector, so the video is fed to the projector, and the audio is fed to your AirPlay speakers or Apple TV (which, in turn, routes audio to your normal home theater speakers).

For a moment I got really excited that you could stream video, but that would probably be a much more controversial move on the developers part (and harder). I would love to be able to stream European Football games that I can currently watch on espn (legitimately I should mention). Unfortunately espn's app doesn't work with dish so I can't use it there (and they would probably lamely disable airplay anyway).

If only there was a way...

there's the dock to HDMI cable for iOS devices.. that would work. no app can override a hardware out, right?

if ESPNs stream is HD, might be worth it for the big screen (streaming be damned).

how do you get your content? do your espn credentials work on Roku, AppleTV, XBOX360 (they all have ESPN apps, right?)

Thanks for the tip.I think I had already tried it but it didn't work because my AppleTV's name was not the default they described (it's AppleTV.local instead of Apple-TV.local, although its full name is "Apple TV")I found out the actual name of my Apple TV thanks to the free Bonjour Browser for iOS by Tildesoft (you have to dig into _airplay._tcp. and it now works.

I also found the previously-non-working-for-the-very-same-reason SendtoAirflick http://norio-nomura.github.com/SendToAirFlick/SendtoAirflick works well with ClickToPlugin and also works for Apple trailers. As long as you stay within Safari, you get an ugly but working "Send To Airflick" rollover that you just have to click.

Now I's really love a more simple pervasive way to send media from my Mac to my AppleTV, but I am pretty sure media companies would be pretty unhappy with Apple if Apple delivered that.I can only hope a third will produce just that!

It drives me crazy that the second-gen AppleTV (unlike the first gen) can't play streamed audio unless the TV is turned on, even via the optical audio-in port.

Really? I just tried this - turned on my AVR, turned on the AppleTV (2nd gen), fired up iTunes. Hit play, switched iTunes' destination to the ATV... plays just fine. TV not on at any point.

It depends on your AVR, and what it tells devices when the TV is off. The Apple TV will not output anything if it can't determine what is connected to the HDMI port and negotiate HDCP.

In my case I occasionally get a long delay between pressing play and getting audio to stream from the ATV if the TV is off, but only if the AVR was just powered on. My system is set up for HDMI-CEC so the AVR turns on and off with the TV... it might be waiting for the TV to respond.

i find AirPlay + iPad to be the killer combo. don't need to stream from my computer any more thanks to Screen Mirroring, so no need for AirFoil et al. anymore either (used to have it).

there are now AirPlay-ready apps like YouTube, Singplayer, PBS and some networks, Hulu+ etc. etc. for most important media sources. There are more sophisticated AirPlay-customized apps with dual screens for others, with more coming every week, like MLB, Bloomberg, and others. and dual screens games too of course. and when all else fails, web browsing on your HDTV via Screen Mirroring works good too - the only decent TV screen browser ever.

the only weak link is the crummy Remote app for Apple TV, which needs a total overhaul.

the whole direction of the Apple ecosystem is clearly away from depending on your computer for simple tasks and toward using iOS for most things most of the time. which makes Airfoil unneccessary. the iPad rules the sofa, and the sofa rules the TV.

This seems to be primarily a means of working around the limitations of the AppleTV itself. Either it's interface is bad or it's unable to stream/share/play something. You should be able to easily stream whatever you want from your Mac or PC to the ATV and not be stuck using iTunes to do it.

I agree, and it's a good thing you can do that with the AppleTV. I watch video on it streamed from my Mac all the time without having to open iTunes at all and in any video format out there. FLV, AVI, MPG, MPV, MKV....in HD and everything. Nope, not rooted or jailbroken or whatever.

You seem to be a supporter of Apple and AppleTV with your strong endorsement! Yes, it should do those things and it does do those things! Bravo!

(yes, I'm being sarcastic in that last bit....JEDIDIAH is a well known Apple critic here at Ars)

The thing that I'm waiting for is the ability to stream the separate channels of a 5.1 surround output to different airplay devices. I would love to send the rear channels of the surround sound to my rear speakers without using wires. I think I'm not alone in that either. The first company to do that will make bank for sure...

How would you then power your surround speakers?

Products have been available for several years already that can at least partly accomplish what you seek. But they come with caveats. For some examples, see below.

From its speaker level outputs, your AVR or amp delivers a high level signal that drives your surround speakers. In contrast, an AirPlay-like device would receive a low level signal that could not drive your surround speakers. So, unless the AirPlay-like device contained its own internal amp, you would need self powered speakers or an external amp. Either way, something would still have to plug into an electrical outlet, and you would still have to run some wires -- power cables, speaker cables, or both.

So, unless they operate on batteries, wireless speakers are never truly wireless -- a complication that otherwise well meaning consumers interested in wireless speakers often fail to consider.

AirPlay does indeed skip, particularly on heavy usage households with lots of devices and many airplay endpoints. Airfoil suffers from the same problem.

Using Apple Lossless as an audio format probably accounts for that (dunno why there's no high bit rate AAC option, in Airfoil *or* AirPlay).

Further, I've noticed that Airfoil uses twice the bandwidth sending to Airfoil Speakers as it does sending to an Airplay receiver. Not sure why that would be, but the result is more skipping on my Wi-Fi network with Airfoil Speakers.

Rogue Amoeba's Nicecast is much kinder to my network (mp3 streams with adjustable bit rates), but you don't get Airfoil's remote control capabilities. And I still haven't found a decent iOS app that can receive a Nicecast stream.

Oh, and you can use AirServer (Mac) or Shairport4w (Windows) to turn your computer into a cheap AirPlay receiver. Works with Airfoil as well as the usual AirPlay-enabled apps — and at half the bandwidth of Airfoil Speakers.

Boxee Box has Airplay support for music, video and pictures (no DRM stuff) however it manages this feat by being the reverse engineered Airplay so Apple could at any time lock them out. You have to manually enable it via the settings menu on the Box.

Still it works well enough and the Boxee Box blows the AppleTV out of the water as a network media player, we've stopped using our AppleTV entirely thanks to the Airplay support on Boxee.

I bought Airfoil about 6 months ago and was really impressed... for the first 15 minutes then things started to go wrong.

The program seemed incredibly buggy and music slued constantly. I emailed Rogue Amoeba Support and they were very helpful (took debug reports etc) but they were unable to resolve the problem. In the end they have me a refund. :(

Maybe things have improved now but I've switched to use a demo version of Nicecast with the TuneIn app picking up the custom stream from my Mac. This works flawlessly.

In my experience, on a very typical home network, is that Airfoil works about 40% of the time. Several email to and from Rogue Ameoba (very slow response time, despite claims of 24-hour turnaround) resulted in some ridiculous suggestions for improving my network performance, like moving the speakers close together (in which case I wouldn't need the app) or further away (my house dimensions are finite) or eliminating network interference from neighbors.(I suppose I could ask them to move away, but....)

Wi-Fi interference is very frustrating and hard to solve, but it's not Rogue Amoeba's fault. Apple's own AirPlay won't work either if it can't consistently get the bandwidth it needs, which is about 3 Mbit/sec for audio and substantially more for video depending on the type of video.

I am (finally) in a situation where the Wi-Fi situation is workable, and Airfoil (as well as AirPlay) is very reliable for me.

Rogue Amoeba makes some great software - I just wish they had a decent solution to use iTunes on a Windows PC as a source for a self-created internet radio station. I know that you can use WinAmp with edcast and IceCast as a functional solution, but it just isn't streamlined enough for my taste.

I like Rogue Amoeba, but sadly, AirFoil just didn't work for me. My typical use case is watching video on my MacBook while I stream synced audio to another mac or iPhone connected to my stereo. The main problem is that to maintain sync with AirPlay, Rogue Amoeba developed a custom media player that you need to use. The player just isn't very good. It tries to replicate the functionality of QuickTime Player, DVD Player, and I guess Safari now that it streams web video. This is a huge task and it isn't even the primary product being sold. My girlfriend refused to use it because of how tweaky and incomplete it is.

We now use AirPhones for Mac to iOS streaming and Soundfly for Mac to Mac streaming. These programs have their issues too, but they maintain sync well enough and only take one click to start using. In our scenario, the experience is far better.

Is there any current software out there that will let me stream flash video crap from my laptop to my Mac plugged into the TV?

I do run Plex, but I'd still sometimes like to just take something I'm watching on my laptop and shoot it at the TV with zero hassle.

It kind of looks like some of Erica's tools, all lumped together may do this, but I'm not clear on that.

On the upside, if the latest Plex is stable, that includes "MyPlex", which kind of solves the problem - you can keep a bookmarklet in your brower's bookmark bar and when you're on any (supported) video site, hit the bookmarklet. That video then gets sent to a queue visible on all your devices running Plex. Close...

It's probably time to look at Boxee again, apparently they support Airplay, but that still leaves me without a way to send from non-iOS devices (I think).

This article would be more interesting if it covered all the apple to apple video streaming possibilities.

A: Due to Apple’s FairPlay DRM, Airfoil Video Player can’t open these video files. Unfortunately, it won’t be possible to support iTunes video until the DRM is dropped by Apple.

I bought a copy in a rush since I wanted to use my Zeppelin as speakers for watching an iTunes movie, rather than the iMac's not-so-good built-in speakers. No worky, with wife sitting frowning on couch.

RA grumpily refunded me when I complained their site was misleading ("Play any audio across your network to a whole host of devices, all in sync! Airfoil sends audio to remote speakers including iOS devices, other computers, and hardware devices like the Apple TV and AirPort Express. Airfoil for Mac gives you any audio, everywhere.").